The Democrats and their lapdogs in the press were so thrilled by the fruition of their Diversity dream that criticism of Obama was completely off limits. Even Hillary couldn't touch him without being destroyed.

Obama was raised in Hawaii by wealthy white people and went to a private school of children of other wealthy people. Since other than the color of his skin, there is nothing "black" as in the terms of "black culture" in his background, this tells us that Obama is once again faking it and putting on the accent and mannerisms to play the game and assume the mantle of 'black victim'.

This kind of doesn't prove your point. I mean citing Bobby Brown and 2001 sermons. Well, okay, but here's the problem with that, which is where did they get these terms from? Literally all but one of your references was to statements made after Hendrix wrote the song. The basic argument is that it is a phrase just kind of floating around the african american community. Well, okay, but you know, my understanding is that Obama really wasn't part very much of that community growing up, being raised by his white mother, and his white grandparents, in Kansas if memory serves, not to mention his time in Indonesia.

Maybe Hendrix doesn't own the patent on that term. But Stone Free is probably one of the most famous uses of it, in a song that finds play to this day on classic rock stations. indeed when they did a tribute album to hendrix it was called "stone free." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Free

So which is more likely? That he picked it up from a mid-nineties ebony article? Or from a famous song from one of the greatest guitarists ever to live? And i might add, in a song that would have resonated with obama because it was expressing the desire to be a free rolling stone, much like his father was.

I would add that its neither here nor there. I have a problem with alot of what the president is doing, but quoting hendrix doesn't bother me at all. i think its funny given what the song is about. But what is annoying is his sense of wounded egotism. But if anything he gets points for style, if he really meant to invoke hendrix.

LL is straining mightily to throw up a smokescreen around the most obvious interpretation of the phrase .. that Obama is indirectly claiming that opposition to his policies is racial based (they talk about me like I’m a "prejorative for a black man")

We are only permitted to use the idioms and expressions of our parents, childhood peers, and possibly the childhood regional dialect? What about our social mobility?

Of course not, but if you start randomly throwing in a southern/british/hindi accent when you've never spent any time in any of those places, it is going to be suspect. (And yes, I'm still irritated about his stupid fake southern accent when he was saying that american's can't speak french. "parlez-vous francais".)

We are only permitted to use the idioms and expressions of our parents, childhood peers, and possibly the childhood regional dialect? What about our social mobility?

It is one thing to use those idioms and expressions naturally and consistently. It is another to, chameleon like, put on the accent or idiom so you can take advantage of the gullibility of the voters and the crowd. Putting on and off his accent and talking the talk depending on who he is addressing. His fake southern accent, Reverend Wright type preaching cadence and fake use of black cultural slang when it is expedient.....then reverting to his also probably fake Harvard educated elitist lecturing speaking tone when addressing the "typical white folks". Which is the real Obama. Who knows. He is fake through and through.

Hillary did it too with her gratingly fake southern accent.

Obama was not raised in a culture that used those idioms or tone of voice or speaking cadance. This isn't to say that people don't change over time and when they change geographic locations they are influenced by the language around them.

However, you don't change from moment to moment or from crowd to crowd.....unless you are a faker and poser like Obama, Hillary and others who are cynical users.

I'm not fond of dogs (I was a paperboy), but I would never treat one badly. What's wrong with Obama?

Can he be cur'd?

He needs a curate!

I didn't like Obama two years ago when he ran and outraced all the the other hounddogs. By now, I can't stand the sight of him, or the cheap tricks he uses to try to make people feel sorry for him. This whimpering business is just another dogged form of PC.

If he were a ninja, he would have done the honorable thing and committed seppaku, or however you spell it. But instead he just goes on whimpering like a dog. It's so much more effective with his handlers!

He acts like a dog that has been hit with a newspaper!

But the strange thing is that except for the WSJ, all the newspapers do is print nice things about him, even though he's shitting all over the country and making the place unfit for human habitation.

I hope PETA gets on him for his slanderous remarks about canines! This guy just keeps crying wolf even though he's really just a tiny little yapping chihuahua.

Bush never once whined or whimpered. Never once! He made a much better pet!

You're for that, though, right, GM? I mean, it's a clear expression of 1st Amendment speech. Granted, it's not the best idea and I wouldn't do it, but it IS legal protest, right? Like flag burning? Right?

Dust yes let us discount that Obama has no "black culture' after all he did not attend a predominately African American church, and he doesn't play pick-up basketball, where from my experience quite a few interesting street expression are exchanged, but then I am not an expert on the matter as you seem to be.

Some part of hell just froze over, Garage, as I agree with you on the book burning thing.

roesch-voltaire, regarding the not-black-enough thing, perhaps you've missed the growing number of black writers/pundits that are saying exactly that. Not that it makes it any more true or valid, just that it's just as ridiculous as the entire topic.

His point, though, about affecting local colloquialisms and patterns of speech stands up. It's transparent and, apparently, tolerated with someone like Hillary does it.

The attributes of a dog are not nearly Obama's character. A dog is super loyal, alert to his masters presence, and commiserates with his master's pains. You are not a dog, Barry. You are more like a skunk.

Everybody that I talk to just hangs their head and looks miserable when the subject of Obama come up. He is a total reject at this point. And it was the last 1000 lies that he told that has made everyone give up on him. Americans instinctively know that no fix will happen until the truth starts to be told us by a gutsy leader like a Washington or a Jackson. Obama's Party Line crap from the bowels of Karl Marx's hell don't cut it anymore. He should have asked Putin.

But I have to say, like my dog Nutmeg, who is forever faked out when I DON'T throw the toy and runs off looking for it, our president continues to run out to the stump, sure he'll find those saved jobs, let alone all of those loyal followers who voted for him in '08.

1) Obama spent his formative years with white people (hippies and libs) and Indonesians, so this is part of his "becoming blacker" effort, like his attendance at Rev Wright's church of Jew and Whitey Hatin'?

2) What are the origins of this expression in black culture, and does it have anything to do with Michael Vick. In my immediate neighborhood there are plenty of nice middle class blacks who appear to love their canine companions and treat them well, but drive a ways to the less salubrious part of town and it is all pit bull and rotties, with ripped ears and patches of fur missing.

So it was a Jimi Hendrix quote, which means it was a writer's sort of thing and from someone older than Obama. It most likely was in his script and he was warned to omit it, but since the speech was going so well, he decided to throw it in anyway.

Any way you slice it, it was not something for a U.S. President to do.

I agree, both with respect to the GZ Mosque and the threatened Koran burning. And in both cases, it is likely to cause the group doing it to be [more] despised, and rightly so.

Although the routine throat cutting, stoning, flag buring, acid-into-face tossing, incitements to murder and genocide and other revolting idiocy that is constantly spewing forth from the Muslim world occasionally makes me want to burn a warehouse full of Korans, one has to take a deep breath and remember that (i) burning stuff you don't like is their culture, not ours - we ARE better than that (and them) and there's no reason to lower ourselves, and (ii) it WILL get US and Allied troops killed, maybe directly, and almost certainly in the long run as it makes it even harder to stabilize places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's an expression - like "working like a dog". It's not supposed to be grammatically correct. I'm sure I've heard it immortalized in song .

I've had two friends who used it a lot or similar - one was black and one was Lebanese-Armenian. (Middle Eastern, but not Muslim. Armenians are commonly a type of Christian , and they have the genocide scars to prove it.)

Quick lyric search came up with Beatles' "working like a dog" and George Harrison's "they treated you like a dog" (talking about John Lennon). And Muddy Waters "you treat me like a dog" from "Baby Please Don't Go."

Wherever he picked it up (and I'm betting it was during his community organizer days), I doubt it was from Hendrix. Obama does not impress me as cool enough to listen to Hendrix. That's why it stands out so, it's like Joe Friday trying to talk like a Hippie.

In the Bobby Brown quote - he is disgusted by the way he is portrayed in the media. 'The press has really destroyed my name," he says. "They don't know me and they talk about me like a dog. It's lies! they don't check sources. I just don't like the way they slander my name."

Is Bobby Brown saying he passed up a chance to "clear" his name by suing for "slander"?

Unless it was like Obama - what "they" were saying was true.

Another question..Why would somebody make up lies about a dog?

Even if the term is some obscure colloquialism - When you are the president of the United States you should strive to be clear.

Granted, it's not the best idea and I wouldn't do it, but it IS legal protest, right? Like flag burning? Right?

What gives me chuckles is the fear that some obscure non-demoninational pastor down in Florida burning a Koran is going to cause the Muslims to go on a murderous rampage.

Kinda shoots a big gigantic hole in that theory of the vast majority of Muslims are moderate and peaceful.

Not going to have much luck finding common ground with a billion and a half folks who are on a hair trigger over something that we consider a Constitutional right. I mean we burn our own flag, desecrate Christian icons as 'works of art', depict the Pope as a Nazi but burn a Koran??? The horror!

one has to take a deep breath and remember that (i) burning stuff you don't like is their culture, not ours - we ARE better than that (and them) and there's no reason to lower ourselves,

Actually our 'culture' has done a pretty bang up job of burning, denigrating and overall making a mockery of Christianity for, oh, the last half century. I mean I can see your point but its a bit rich that we're suddenly going to be respectful of someone religion.

and (ii) it WILL get US and Allied troops killed, maybe directly, and almost certainly in the long run as it makes it even harder to stabilize places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

You know what? You are probably right, sadly. That being the case can we stop pretending that the West will ever find any kind of commonality and tolerance with the Muslim world? Or should we simply admit that our 'rights' such as freedom of expression are not compatible with them and demand that any offensive acts, works of art, cartoons or protests be limited to those groups who won't blow your ass up.

I care not a whit about the hows, whats and whys of Obama's taste in rhetorical bon mots, though "they talk about me like a dog" is so particularly impoverished that it only lends more doubt to the subject of his native intelligence. (One can only marvel at his magna cum laude matriculation from Harvard Law, and suspect there was enough grade fudging going on there to corner the cocoa futures market. Ah, but if the Nobel Committee could be corrupted beyond all future credibility, why not Harvard, eh? The man pollutes very thing he touches.)

“They talk about me like a dog.” Hmmph. A plea for pity from the downtrodden workers of this formerly great nation. What a spineless little bleater he is after all.

During the eight years of the last Administration the Democrats and their myrmidons heaped the most vile abuse their pea brains could concoct upon the head of GWB – comparing him to a ape in the first hysterical gasp and in the next breath comparing him to Hitler, yet Bush acknowledged not a bit of it. (Sadly the lexicon of lefty insults is thin indeed. The rhetoricians of MoveOn.Org and the Huff’n Puffing Post have all the predatory flair of delinquent ninth graders) Never once did he whimper or whinge. There were no bit lips or barely contained red-faced tantrums. Is it any wonder that given the choice most Americans would rather have Bush back?

I have very little respect for Islam as such or the Koran itself, but I also try to be someone who can respect himself, and burning books - any books - doesn't fit with the kind of person I want to be. That said I do have respect, and sympathy, for the truly moderate Muslims who are trying to make a go of it in that messed up religion/death cult.

"Actually our 'culture' has done a pretty bang up job of burning, denigrating and overall making a mockery of Christianity for, oh, the last half century."

Baloney. We're so self-righteous, ostentatiously pious, and self-flatteringly proud of being a "Christian nation" (sic) that we can't even see how hateful and violent and un-Christian a people we really are.

Baloney. We're so self-righteous, ostentatiously pious, and self-flatteringly proud of being a "Christian nation" (sic) that we can't even see how hateful and violent and un-Christian a people we really are.

Cook, seriously shut up. For someone who spews nothing but hate and disdain for this country you're either a complete hypocrite for continuing to live here enjoying its benefits or a troll.

I have no hate for this country, for what we're supposed to be...but I have plenty of disdain for the barbarians who seethe within its borders, who maraud through its corporate boardrooms and halls of power and who make its policies, and who mouth platitudes about its abiding greatness, it's Constitutional splendor, while shitting all over the Constitution and on any notion of government "by the people, of the people, and for the people," and who commit evil in its (and our) name.

Those who scorn critics of America's lawlessness and violence would have accused Christ of hating his religion for throwing the money changers out of the temple, or white blood cells of being traitors to the body for attacking virulent infecting cells, viruses, and bacteria.

It's not the duty of citizens to be cheerleaders for their country, but to be vigilant guards against and vocal critics of every instance where their country betrays its principles and violates justice or commits violence against its own or others.